Shadow Man (Paragons of Queer Speculative Fiction) (8 page)

From Wiidfare, or from
ColCom and the IDCA? Tatian wondered. Norssco had always had a
reputation for doing trade in a big way. Not that people of Carlon's
rank were involved--at least, not that much--but Norssco employed a
good seventy-five or eighty junior staff, secretaries, technicians,
backcountry brokers, most of whom supplemented an inadequate income
by selling permits to players. But that was none of his business, as
long as Carlon wasn't interfering with NAPD. "So have we," he
said, voice neutral, and Carlon's smile widened briefly.

"Sorry to hear it."

"Wiidfare offered me
an extra permit, with the usual string attached," Tatian said. "I
hope he didn't get any ideas about that from you."

Carlon shook his head.
"If there are any extra permits, Tatian, I want them for me."

"One other thing,"
Tatian said. "I will take it very badly if Norssco reps show up in
the peninsular
mesnie
s.
Clear?"

"I--" Carlon
stopped, closing his lips tight over whatever else he would have
said. "Clear enough. I don't appreciate threats, Tatian."

"It's not a
threat," Tatian said, and smiled. "It's a promise."

"Clear," Carlon
said, face grim, and Tatian broke the connection. He leaned back in
his chair, watching the panel slide closed again over the flat
screen. Norssco would bear watching now, at least until after the
harvests that were due at Midsummer had all been delivered, but it
had been important to state NAPD's position as explicitly as
possible.

He reached for the
shadowscreen again, trailed his fingers through the varying
sensations, cold and hot, rough and smooth, adjusting the desktop to
a more comfortable working configuration. Lanhoss Mats, the shipping
wrangler, as well as Derebought's partner, had left a long, thickly
annotated file updating his projections for the weeks following the
harvest--storage space available, accessible, and already rented,
and the ships scheduled to land and the backup craft available.
Tatian sighed, looking at it, but dragged it to the top of the file.
The sooner he looked through it, the sooner he could turn it back
over to Mats, and he tapped the icon to open it.

The soft sound was
echoed, more loudly, from the doorway, and a familiar voice said,
"Derry said you wanted to see me?" Tatian pushed the file away
with some relief. "Yeah. Come on in."

Shan Reiss seated
himself warily in the visitor's chair. He was young to be NAPD's
chief driver, and looked younger, so that Tatian frequently had to
remind himself that Reiss had been born on Hara, and knew the
backcountry as well as any indigene. He was a thin, tall man, all
whipcord muscle, brown skin burned darker by the planet's fierce
sun--could have passed for an indigene, Tatian thought, not for the
first time, if it weren't for the vivid blue eyes. At the moment,
those eyes were very worried, and Tatian wondered just what he'd
been up to. As Wiidfare had implied, Reiss hung out in the trade bars
and dance houses; if he was in trouble, it would involve sex. But if
he wasn't selling permits, it was no one's business but his own.

"Do you know anything
about a tech named Starli?" he asked, and saw Reiss's shoulders
slump fractionally. "She's a Massingberd, I'm told."

"Yeah, I know her."
In spite of himself, Reiss sounded surprised, and Tatian hoped
whatever trouble he was in wouldn't come home to the company.

"Is she any good?
Good enough to work on my implants, I mean." Tatian touched his
wrist. He had been complaining about the bad connection for a month
now.

Reiss tilted his head
to one side, an indigene's gesture. "Starli's very good, but
she is local. She's not licensed to work on the full suite, just on
the stuff the
kittereen
drivers carry."

"Would she work on
mine?" Tatian asked. They all knew, and Reiss better than most, as
involved as he was in the jet-car races, how expensive it could be to
get the necessary certifications. A lot of indigene techs just didn't
bother to get the higher-level, more costly papers, but still had the
necessary skills to handle the implants. The trick was finding the
ones who were genuinely competent.

"She might," Reiss
said. "She doesn't have a lot of use for off-worlders. But if she
agreed, she'd do a good job. Where'd you hear about her, anyway?"

"I ran into someone
at the courthouse," Tatian answered. "Literally. We ended up
talking, and I mentioned I needed some work done. And 3e
mentioned Starli."

"Did you get a name?
It might be somebody I know."

"Warreven. Ȝe's
a Stiller."

Reiss grinned. "I
know Raven. He's a big
kittereen
fan--I was surprised I didn't see him up at Irenfot, but I guess
if he was in court, that explains it."

"What's 3e
do?" Tatian asked. He still hadn't gotten used to Reiss's habit
of translating the indigenes' two genders into normal speech.

"He--sorry, 3e's
an Important Man." Reiss used the
franca
words, switched back to creole. "Ȝe
and a couple of 3er
cousins, they're advocates. They specialize in trade cases,
defending prostitutes,
marijaks
,
you know. Lately, I heard they were taking on a couple of labor
brokers for fraudulent hiring."

"That's going to
win 3im friends," Tatian
said. The labor brokers were under Temelathe's direct
protection--were licensed by him personally--and were one of the
more lucrative parts of the Most Important Man's private empire.
Temelathe's power might technically be based on his position as
Speaker of the Watch Council, and indirectly on his status as the
direct heir of Captain Stane, but the money that supported all that
came from off-world sources.

"Oh, yeah," Reiss
said, "and that's not the best of it, either. You know who one of
3er partners is?"

Tatian shook his head.

"Haliday Stiller."

Tatian shook his head
again. The name was vaguely familiar, but he couldn't place it.

"You remember,"
Reiss said, with a hint of impatience. "Ȝe
took the clan to court, all the way to the Watch Council, over
whether 3e could register
as a herm."

"That was before my
time," Tatian said. But he did remember the talk; the case had been
only a few years old when he first came to Hara. Haliday Stiller had
demanded the right to call 3imself
a herm on legal documents, and the Watch Council, officially the
highest indigenous authority, and Temelathe's puppet, had not only
refused to allow it, but, for good measure, had reassigned Haliday's
legal gender, decreeing that, since 3e
wouldn't choose, the proverbial "reasonable man" would see 3im
as a woman. But the person he had seen with Warreven had definitely
been male--and the name was Malemayn, he remembered suddenly. "Would
Starli do the work if you introduced me? I need to get it done soon."

"I can ask," Reiss
said, accepting the change of subject, and looked down at his hands.
He was wired, too, had gotten his suit as part of a corporate
scholarship deal. "I have to go over to Kittree Row tomorrow
morning anyway, I'll ask then. You free in the afternoon?"

"I can make time,"
Tatian said. "Thanks, Reiss." "No problem," the younger man
said, and rose easily. Tatian watched him go, and turned his
attention back to the files on his desktop, trying to ignore the
faint static buzz in the bones of his hand. Tomorrow, he told
himself, tomorrow, he would find out whether or not he'd have to go
to the port for the repairs.

Seraaliste
,
seraalistes
: (Hara) the man or woman within each clan who is
primarily responsible
for negotiating with the off-world buyers; he or she is also
responsible for mediating among his or her clan's
mesnies
.
This is an elective office.

3

Warreven

They took their time walking
back from lunch, savoring the heat and the fitful land breeze. The
streets had been dry when they left the bar; by the time they reached
the Harbor Market, the last shreds of cloud had vanished inland, and
thin white parasols blossomed like flowers in the spaces between the
semi-permanent stalls. Warreven paused at the edge of the embankment,
leaned on the hot stones of the wall to look along the length of the
massive quay that divided the main harbor from the smaller Sail
Harbor. This close to Midsummer, all the berths were filled with
slab-sided, broad-beamed coasters, and the quay swarmed with dockers
and their machines, unloading the first of the summer's harvest.
From the embankment, it was impossible to see even the nearest ship's
cargo, but Warreven could fill in the details from almost thirty
summers' experience: there would be crates of broadleaf kelp, the
fronds packed damp, and bales of cut grass gathered from the shallows
along the Stiller Peninsula. There would be smaller boxes of wide-web
nodes, crumb-coral, and false-kelp fronds and bladders and even, if
someone was very lucky, a few of the deep-growing false-kelp's
knotty holdfasts. From the Stanelands to the north, there would be
ships loaded down with raw sweetsap and thornberry, branch and fruit
alike, and baskets of creeping star. And it was all going to feed the
off-world economy. He smiled without humor and shaded his eyes to
pick out the off-worlders' runabouts drawn up in the reserved slots
behind the factors' sheds, company marks bright on doors and engine
cowlings. The off-worlders were easy to pick out in the crowd of
dockers and sailors, too: pale figures, draped in white or tan
against the heat and sun, ghostly against the bright colors around
them.

A horn sounded, and the
day-ferry appeared beyond the tip of the quay, shouldering its way
through the crowd of smaller boats to its anchorage below the
Ferryhead. A wedding band was playing on the top deck, the pulse of
the drums carrying across the water, and Warreven could just pick out
the bride and her attendants, a knot of stark white silk and silver
among the holiday colors.

"Anyone we know?"
Malemayn asked, and Warreven turned back to face him.

"Not as far as I
know."

Malemayn nodded,
shading his eyes to look out over the harbor. "I'd hate to miss
an obligation."

"Don't worry about
that," Warreven said. "Anyone you owe a present will be sure to
let you know."

Malemayn grinned,
acknowledging the truth of the comment. Warreven looked past him, up
the hill to the bars of Dock Row and Harborside. Most of the
wrangwys
houses, the bar and dance houses that catered to trade, off-world
players, and Hara's odd-bodied were closed now; most wouldn't
open until sundown, but a few were already doing business. He picked
out the doors, the sun-faded bars of neon light surrounding them,
wondering if any of his friends or clients were there already.
Shinbone on the Embankment was open, its double doors wide to the
afternoon sun, the bouncer Brisban stretching luxuriously in the
warmth; a little farther along the street, a couple of off-worlders
were standing outside Hogeye's, nudging each other as they scanned
the show-cards and dared each other to go in. Warreven made a face at
that and turned away.

"We should be getting
back."

Malemayn looked at him,
startled, then looked up the hill toward the bars. "There's
nothing we can do, Raven. Not about them."

"I know. And we
should still get back to work." Warreven pushed himself away from
the Embankment wall, headed down the first set of stairs to cut
through the Market, drowning his anger in the familiar noise and
smells. The Harbor Market was the largest of Bonemarche's three
market squares--the others were the Glass Market, on the north side
of town by the railroad terminus, and the off-worlders' Souk on the
edge of the Startown district--and it was always crowded, even on
the edges, the stalls and stone-marked pitches gaudy with goods. Most
were local products, foodstuffs, and glass, and silk in skeins and
tufts of floss and bolts of dyed and painted cloth; there were a few
machine-dealers as well, offering cheap off-world disk-readers and
music boxes and card-comps, all at ridiculous prices. The noise of
drums cut through the noise of bargaining, and he looked toward the
sound to see a woman dancing on the platform where the land-spiders
were auctioned at the Quarter-days. It was a good omen, a change of
mood, and he started toward it, following the heavy heartbeat of the
tonnere
-
bas
and the intricate higher double beat of the counterpoint. He stopped
at the edge of the crowd surrounding the platform, looking up at the
dancer. Malemayn trailed cheerfully enough in his wake, and said,
sounding almost surprised, "She's good."

Warreven nodded. The
woman--she was definitely a woman--spun and stooped on the raised
stage, sunlight flashing from the glass bangles that covered her arms
from wrist to elbow. There were glass beads braided into her hair,
seemingly thousands of them, in every color; they sparked in the
sunlight, and clashed like cymbals as she bent nearly double, hair
flying. Her tiered skirts, their hems sewn with still more beads and
the occasional bright disk of a metal coin, stood out from her waist
as she spun, then collapsed to a twisted cylinder that briefly
outlined the long shape of her legs and drew cheers from some of the
watching men. The platform at her feet was already littered with
flowers and a few coins; the
shaal
spread out between the two drummers in front of the platform held
maybe a fivemeg more in small change. There were a few off-world
coins among the scattered seaglass, and more flowers. He cocked his
head, seeing the latter, and then the dancer straightened again, and
he saw the three parallel lines drawn in white across her cheek. Not
just a dancer, then, but a
vieuvant
,
one of the old souls who served God and the spirits, and this was not
just a performance, but an
offetre
,
a service to the spirits: she danced for, danced as, the
Heart-breaker, the spirit who was spring and lust and all the unruly
powers of procreation. The counterpoint drummer wore the same marks
on his beardless face.